


Cosmology

by with_the_monsters



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Gen, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-02-07
Updated: 2015-05-03
Packaged: 2018-03-10 22:48:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 19,963
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3306242
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/with_the_monsters/pseuds/with_the_monsters
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Albus Potter tries to navigate a world always trying to take a chunk out of the kids of the Boy Who Lived. It's not that easy with erratic siblings, a surplus of authority figures and a media system that latches onto every tiny misstep.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Aphelion

Lily’s wringing her hands when he wakes up. Albus has to blink three or four times to get her face into focus—he’s fairly confident that only his little sister would be sat on his legs at four o’ clock in the morning, but since she’s dyed her hair blonde the instinctual recognition has eluded him. He really hates the new colour, actually. And not only because it gives him a fright any time he catches sight of her.

He groans, long-drawn-out and miserable. He already knows she’ll have cast a Silencing charm on the curtains around him—those spells are as habitual as breathing for the Potter kids.

“Lily,” he grumbles, lifting dead-weight arms to catch at her wrists and stop her twisting at her own fingers, “What now?”

“You’ve got to help me,” she tells him, swarming closer, “We have to get to London.”

Albus sighs heavily. A number of questions present themselves, but he takes a moment to sort them through before firing them off. Dealing with Lily in this kind of mood requires careful tactics or she’s like to leave you more confused than you started. He is not at all as alert as he needs to be to sort her out gently, so he opens his eyes again and catches her gaze, squeezing his fingers firmer around her wrists to make her pay attention.

“Short answers, alright?” he demands of her, raising one eyebrow ever-so-slightly. Lily rolls her eyes but nods. She’s on edge tonight, in a different way to how she is usually. You can always count on Lily to be amped up, but usually the tension is excitement and mischief. Tonight it’s all fear.

“Who’s we?”

The reply is across her lips almost before the question has left his, like she read the intention of it on his tongue, “Me and Hel.”

Albus resists the wave of despair threatening to overwhelm him. Lily’s best friend, Helena Nott, is the sweetest of Lily’s little Slytherin crew by miles and miles; but she’s also the silliest by a long way and seemingly perpetually in need of rescue. Al likes her fine, but at this time of night on a hangover helping her is about the lowest thing on his list of priorities.

He lets out a measured sigh, releasing Lily’s wrists. She clambers closer still, straddling his waist to grab at his arms herself, cramming her body up against his to _demand_ his attention.

“You’ve _got_ to help us. It’s absolutely urgent. _Absolutely_.”

To emphasise this point, her eyes are looming wide and demanding less than three inches from his own, creased with worry around the edges. Albus stares her down for several long seconds before he finally caves.

“Fine. Get off.”

Lily seizes his face in both hands and plants a loud, satisfied kiss on the end of his nose. Albus groans and twists with his whole body to dislodge her. She chuckles in delight and slides with his movement, somehow hitting precisely the gap in the hangings to land catlike on two socked feet.

Albus is probably ninety percent unsurprised to see that dark-haired Helena is stood in the dormitory with his sister when he emerges. How Lily has managed to sneak both of them into a common room she does not belong in will probably be a mystery to him forever—Albus learnt early on in life to pick his battles when it comes to his sister, and he doesn’t really care enough to argue her into telling him how she got in. She probably just bribed one of their cousins somehow, anyway.

“Come on then,” he whispers to the pair of fifth years when he has a jumper pulled on over his pyjamas, and feels Lily’s fingers attach inexorably to the wool of his top as they pad silently across the sleeping dormitory.

By the time they make it to the secret passage out to Honeyduke’s, Albus feels fully woken up at last. He and Lily perfected the art of sneaking around unnoticed at the tender ages of seven and five respectively, but Helena has always been the type to attract attention at all moments of her life and getting her past the patrolling prefect in the Charms corridor was a serious challenge. Nothing Albus and Lily were not equal to, naturally, but tricky enough to get him awake and alert.

Now, however, in the muffled earthy gloominess of the passageway, he can relax enough to ask the obvious question.

“So, what’s this urgent trip all about?”

Lily and Helena exchange A Look. Albus feels that funny wave of jealousy that always surges when he is reminded that there are people outside himself and James with whom Lily shares Looks, but he fights it down. The list is short, after all, just a couple of her little snakey friends—and Teddy, of course—and maybe their cousin Louis, on a good day. He’s never wanted to be a protective older brother or anything so helplessly irritating, but being a Potter kid in this world just comes tied up in being territorial over your siblings, and there’s nothing much he can do about it. He knows Lily and James feel the same way. They created a wall around themselves from the outside world before they can remember and extending hands from behind it to other people is something they all struggle with. He knows it. He knows Lily knows it, too. She proves it by detaching her gaze from her friend’s and levelling it at him instead, eyes serious and steady.

“Hel’s pregnant. We’ve got to get her to a place for abortions. Wherever you get them.”

Albus is not the dramatic sibling in this family, so he doesn’t stop dead. Instead he slows up until he is completely halted, and then stands waiting for the two girls to notice. Lily does almost instantly, of course, and extends a hand out to catch at Helena.

“What?” she demands, rounding on her brother. She has this way of narrowing her eyes that makes lesser people quail. Albus doesn’t even shift.

“You want me to apparate you to an abortion clinic,” he says slowly, his cool stare now flicking calmly between the pair, “At four o’ clock in the morning?”

Helena hangs her head. Lily, by contrast, tilts hers back slightly, slanting her jaw to observe Albus from the new angle. He waits. His sister can maintain the icy façade around almost anyone, but she has never ever been able to hold it in front of him.

“Yeah,” she replies at last, when the silence has become tense enough to have Helena shifting uncomfortably from foot to foot, “Got a problem with that?”

Albus breathes out hard through his nose, and then turns abruptly on his heel. Lily shouts in annoyance behind him, and in no time at all he feels her fingers pulling angrily at his sleeve, catching at the skin of his arm with it and wrenching enough to hurt.

“What are you doing?!” she demands, snaking around to plant herself in his way when the pain does not put any dent in his measured walk. “You said!” She punctuates this last with both hands on his chest, leaning her body weight into him to halt him. Albus rocks backwards slightly—not from the shove, because Lily doesn’t shove him, not the way she does James—but simply to put her off balance. She stumbles a step forward and catches herself, feline balance asserting itself quickly, but not quickly enough to satiate her pride. Her eyes are dark when they find his again, and Albus has not been brother to her for sixteen years without learning the warning signs for imminent loss of temper.

He’s probably the top candidate for dealing with her like that, in truth. James talks her down best but her fury gets to him in ways it doesn’t Albus. Neither of them take what she says seriously in the depths of her dark angers, but it always makes James so sad to see how desperately miserable she is underneath all the bravado. Albus doesn’t get sad, because he understands it. Viscerally, absolutely, he _understands_ Lily.

With all of this in mind, he catches at her arms, hands circling hard around each of her biceps. Behind them, for maybe the first time in her life, Helena Nott is totally silent. Her held breath is almost a noise in itself. This is a private moment, the sort few outsiders are ever privy to. The sort that any number of magazines would give galleons for.

 Lily glares up at him, jaw jutting, rising rage in every line of her face. With a steady movement, Albus turns and twists her up against the earthy wall of the tunnel. He doesn’t push her or squeeze her, he simply holds her there. It’s a technique he learnt off Teddy, after Lily lost it around him for the first time. Teddy had simply backed her against the wall and held her there, steady and unmoving, impervious to her screaming until she calmed down. For some unknown, utterly mystical reason it worked, and it went on working from there.

It works now, in fact. He feels the wired tension begin to drain from her arms almost immediately, and her face begins to soften. They stare each other down the entire time. He knows this is where the rumours come from, the ones that say they all love each other the wrong way, him and Lily and James. Maybe they do. Albus has never really known. But in truth they simply understand each other best in silence, standing close and still and calm.

It’s no wonder the rest of his personal relationships are so fucked, when he relates to his brother and sister so weirdly.

Lily’s breathing has evened out now, and her hands come up to push at his chest again. The battle of wills was fought in those quick quiet moments, and she has capitulated. She does shove at him this time, the way she does with James, sharp and jerky. Her voice sounds too loud in the quiet tunnel.

“Get off, dipshit. Tell us why you won’t go.”

Albus releases her. He steps back and tilts his head back at her, consciously mimicking one of her little habits, slanting his eyes down his nose at her. Equal to this, Lily simply glares up, one dyed-dark brow climbing higher and higher on her forehand.

“It’s four o’ clock,” Albus reminds her. Lily jerks her head sideways in a movement that clearly demands, _So?_

“So it’s the middle of the night,” he continues patiently, “You think those places are open twenty four hours?”

He doesn’t hang around to watch that nugget of common sense sink in. He steps around her and sets off back up the tunnel, strides long and assured. He hears the muttering of a conferral between the two girls behind him, and not long after the scampering of feet to catch up with him.

“So you’re right,” Lily tells him, slowing to match his pace. Albus doesn’t bother to reply with, _obviously_. She’ll know.

“Will you take us at the weekend?” Helena pipes up from Lily’s other side. It’s the first she’s spoken to him all night—perhaps the first she’s spoken to him in months, actually. Albus is well aware that he intimidates Helena, and he does not care one jot. With this in mind, he turns his head without slowing and gazes across at her inscrutably. Helena quails, but to her credit does not duck her eyes. Albus stares her down for a little while longer, and then the briefest hint of a smile flashes across his face before he turns his attention back to the circle of light cast by Lily’s conjured floating lamps.

“Alright,” he agrees with an air of total disinterest, “Saturday. After breakfast.”

Helena lets out the huff of relief he can tell she’s been holding in for a while. After a quiet thank you, she asks Lily something in an undertone, and conversation flashes between them. Albus ignores it. He is tired, hungover, and due in Transfiguration at eight-thirty in the morning. It is safe to say he is not looking forward to it at all.

 

* * *

 

 

On Saturday as promised Albus and Lily sneak Helena off school grounds, and then they each latch onto his arms so he can apparate them all to the appropriate part of London. They arrive all in one piece, and Lily acts as surprised as ever about it. Albus ignores her. His ability with magic is notoriously unspectacular, but he is a damn good apparator. Something about power of concentration, someone told him once. Mostly if Albus thinks about it at all it’s to be pissed off that that apparent concentration can’t give him the effortless aptitude for academics that Rose has—but he doesn’t think about it that much, in truth.

He has to go into the clinic with Lily and Helena to perform a Confundus charm on the receptionist and doctor, since both of them are still under the influence of the Trace. It’s probably a shady moral choice, but Albus is his father in fewer ways than people think and it leaves him with not a shade of guilt.

The girls disappear with the doctor, and Albus leaves them to it.

 He apparates to the shabby front door of a student house in Camden and slips inside without knocking. The air is heavy and acrid with the smell of marijuana, and Albus heaves in a lungful of the weighty scent with something akin to relief. It’s familiar and promising—and it means that Kieren is in.

Albus is not the hollering sort, so he simply raps his wand sharply against the wall to send a basic shuddering spell up to Kieren’s bedroom to alert him to his presence, and then heads for the grubby kitchen.

By the time the other boy comes down the stairs, rubbing his eyes, Albus is seated in a rickety chair calmly staring around the room.

“It’s gross,” says Kieren by way of greeting, “I know.”

“Cleaning charms exist,” Albus reminds him, sliding his wand sideways to leave a gleaming trail of cleanliness through the stickiness on the table as a demonstration of his point.

“No shit,” Kieren replies without rancour, flicking the switch on the kettle and collapsing into a chair across from Albus in one easy movement. “You know I live with Muggles. I told you like twelve times. They’ll get suspicious as fuck if I clean magically.”

Albus stares across at him without a hint of sympathy.

“You’re going to get seriously ill.”

Kieren lifts one shoulder in a slow, deliberate shrug. The two boys regard each other blankly for a moment or two longer, and then Albus cracks the hint of a smile and Kieren laughs, lounging back in his chair and shaking his head fondly across at Albus.

“You’re full of shit, Potter,” he says.

It’s Albus’ turn to shrug now, putting both shoulders into it, his face a studied mask of indifference. Kieren laughs again, and he’s still chuckling as the kettle finishes boiling and he gets up to pour water into two mugs.

“So,” he says as he sits back down and pushes a mug of too-strong instant coffee towards Albus, “Why are you here?”

“I had to bring my sister,” Albus explains, picking up the coffee with no intention of drinking it, “A friend of hers has—well, I don’t even know, got herself in trouble. It was inevitable, I guess, she doesn’t seem particularly skilled in the field of common sense. They needed a lift to London, anyway.”

“The Nott girl?” Kieren guesses. Lily’s friends are few and far between, and notorious enough as a crew inside Hogwarts that even the recently-graduated tend to know all their names. Albus nods, and Kieren rolls his eyes. “I swear, that kid. I’ve known her since I was like six and she’s been dumb as fuck the entire time. Got herself locked in a treehouse once. A treehouse _without a lock_.”

Albus lets that sit for a moment or two.

“I don’t think she’s as stupid as people say,” he offers finally, ignoring Kieren’s snort of discouragement, “No, seriously. I think she plays up to it a lot. Lily doesn’t have the patience to be close to someone like that. There’s gotta be something up there.”

Kieren snorts again. “Your sister is a weird little Slytherin,” he says, “What she does and doesn’t have the patience for is different every day of the week.”

Kieren realises he’s crossed a line before he’s even finished speaking. Albus can see it in his face. They’re easy together, these two. He likes Kieren a lot. They have the same opinions on a lot of things, and there’s no bullshit the way there is with a lot of the people in Kieren’s crowd. But Albus’ family is a subject you tread around the way you tread around an unexploded bomb, and even Kieren respects that. Albus is so chilled about the vast majority of things that people have learnt to be careful about the few topics he isn’t.

“Okay, subject change,” Kieren says hastily, rubbing the back of his head and messing his hair up even further, “There’s a thing tonight at Geckos. I know Thomas is going to be there. You should come.”

Albus wants to. He wants to _so_ much.

“I can’t,” he tells Kieren regretfully, “There’s a thing. I have to be back at Hogwarts.”

Kieren folds both arms. “I think you’re being a pussy.”

“What the fuck, Rowle,” Albus retorts without heat, rolling his eyes across at him, “You really think that shit will work on me? Have you _met_ my siblings?”

“What do they have to do with it?” Kieren demands in return, expression challenging. The first answer that presents itself in Albus’ mind is simply _a lot_ , because Lily and James have a lot to do with almost everything in his life, either directly or indirectly. But that is not the right answer to this question, so he offers a different one instead.

“Emotional blackmail. Trying to psych me into stuff. I’ve got eighteen years’ experience with James and sixteen with Lily. And they’re much better at it than you.”

Kieren appears to consider that a fair answer. He grins over the top of his mug at Albus, and his eyes seem suddenly very bright.

“They’re not better than me at everything.”

He’s certainly challenging now. He’s shifted the entire tone of this conversation with one simple sentence, and their gazes meet as they both absorb the new direction. Albus shifts in his chair, adjusting position to lounge deeper, to appear more relaxed, habitual as ever in his reaction to increased tension, and detaches his eyes from Kieren’s to glance at the clock.

“I can’t. I don’t have time. I’ve got to go back for the girls.”

“It won’t take long,” Kieren promises, already setting his mug down on the table, “It never does.”

And then he leans across the table, planting one hand carefully in the clean patch Albus created earlier, and curls his fingers around the back of Albus’ head. Albus doesn’t bother fighting as he’s drawn inexorably forward. He’d known, really, that this was what he’d been headed for from the second he’d apparated to the door.

 

* * *

 

 

He’s late for Lily and Helena, and he knows that Lily _knows_ the second he apparates into the alley next to them. His sister surveys his rumpled hair and incredibly satiated demeanour for about five seconds before turning away with an exasperated, “Psh.”

Albus ignores her.  

“Was it alright?” he asks of Helena. He does not usually care one way or the other whether Lily’s friends are okay, but the girl’s pale and shaking and leaning far too obviously on Lily. It’s going to be a nightmare getting her back to her dorm without a teacher or prefect interrupting to try to get her to the Hospital Wing.

“It was an _abortion_ , Al,” Lily huffs out in irritation, “Obviously it wasn’t alright.”

Helena doesn’t look up. She simply sags further onto her friend, and murmurs something Albus can’t make out. Lily picks it up easily, though, and without a word extends a hand to clutch onto Albus. He looks down at the point of contact, then back up at her. She cants her head abruptly, and Albus obeys the unspoken order without a shred of the sarcasm he usually feels honour-bound to employ when she gets bossy. He simply encircles his right hand around Helena’s trembling forearm, and then twists them off into darkness.

It certainly takes a while, but they eventually get Helena back up to the castle. Albus ends up having to hoist her up into his arms to carry her down to the dungeons, and by the time they reach the Slytherin common room entrance all of the tension Kieren had skilfully blissed out of him has returned in full force. He sets her down on her feet with as much detachment as he can muster, rolling his shoulders back once in relief. For a girl who looks like a strong wind would knock her over, she’s remarkably heavy.

Lily carefully loops Helena’s arm around her shoulders to support her, and takes a step forward. Then she pauses and turns back to Albus.

“I owe you.”

Albus inclines his head in acknowledgement, then leaves them to it. Without a backwards glance he turns, abandoning them to whatever they’re planning to do with the rest of the afternoon and setting off to Gryffindor Tower and the much-needed comfort of his bed.

He doesn’t get it.

Scorpius is up there when he gains the top of the stairs. Albus can see the ends of his legs dangling off the bed, bare feet tapping gently against the wood in time to some unheard beat.

“Malfoy,” he says, “That’s not your bed.”

The feet stop tapping. Short seconds later, Scorpius’ head rears into view, and he’s wearing the most shit-eating grin.

“Are you taking a _tone_ with me, Potter?” he demands. Albus resists the urge to roll his eyes. He finds it astronomically unfair that he has been saddled with both a sister and a best friend who opt into the most monumentally irritating moods on a regular basis.

“I am,” he replies instead of rolling his eyes, crossing the floor towards his bed to stare Scorpius down from a better angle, “I’d heed it. I’m having a bad morning.”

One pale blond eyebrow lifts with effortless elegance. Albus does his best not to watch it go. The grace of Scorpius is hard enough for him to deal with on a good day, and he is not at all equipped for it now.

“I’m serious,” he insists when Scorpius makes no hint that he might move, “Get off. I need a nap.”

“Rough morning?” pipes up a new voice sympathetically, and Albus cranes his head backwards to see around the hangings of his four-poster bed. His cousin Molly is staring back at him from Scorpius’ bed and smirking widely. Albus feels his mood sink even lower.

“Look,” he says now, turning his attention back to his best friend, “You know I don’t care who you’re fooling around with, yeah? It’s nothing to me. And my cousins are free to do exactly as they want with whoever they want. I’m not getting in their business.” He pauses, and his voice darkens as he continues, “But she is _thirteen years old,_ Scorpius, and if you don’t think—”

“Oh, fuck off, Potter,” Scorpius snaps, rolling off the bed and to his feet in one sinuous ripple, “She’s here about Rose’s birthday party. And you’re one to talk, anyway.” He adds this last as he bumps Albus’ shoulder roughly with his own, striding past him towards the staircase with irritability written all over him.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Albus inquires icily at his retreating back. With most people, he can let this shit go. It just flows right off him. But with Scorpius—well, with Scorpius it’s never that simple.

“Oh come on,” says Scorpius, pausing in the doorway, “You think I can’t tell when you’ve been getting off with someone? You get this funny glazed look in your eye. Like you’re high, almost.”

Albus sincerely doubts that.

“Not that it’s any of your business,” he informs him coldly, “But Kieren is a grown-up. Not a _child_. So to imply that I am in any way being a hypocrite about this is not only unfair, it’s also entirely untrue.”

Scorpius flips him off in silence as he disappears down the stairs.

“Wow,” says Molly brightly from the bed, “I haven’t heard you string that long a sentence together since you got pissed at James for talking Lily into doing body shots. You _must_ be in a bad mood.”

Albus takes a very, very deep breath.

“Please,” he begs at last, “Please go away.”

Molly laughs, but fortunately obliges. She tumbles off the bed in the manner of a very overeager terrier, and blows him a kiss as she skips towards the door.

“You will be involved in this party planning, just so you know,” she threatens right before she shuts the door behind her, short black bob swinging menacingly as she whips her head to glare at him, “You can’t avoid it forever.” Then she slams the door so hard it rattles on its hinges, and leaves him in blissful silence.

“Watch me,” Albus mumbles to the empty room, and then collapses face down onto his bed without even removing his shoes. He’s asleep before Molly makes it to the common room.

 

* * *

 

 

True to his word, Albus successfully avoids any mention of party planning. He slopes off out of the castle at any opportunity, visiting Kieren a couple of times and spending a whole series of afternoons down on the coast with his cousin Victoire, whom Albus adores simply for her vicious sense of humour, and who can be trusted to never get involved with anything concerning Rose.

He’s on the beach with her one afternoon, watching her skip rocks atrociously—she’s just throwing them, really—when she says something that surprises him so much he very nearly reacts overtly. Fortunately he’s trained himself well over the years, and contains all but his left eyebrow. This arches sharply above his sunglasses as his cousin speaks up.

“Rumour has it,” Victoire announces, chucking a rock so apathetically that it lands in the water a mere two feet in front of her with a dull sploosh, “That your darling brother is hooking up with my ex-boyfriend.”

His silence clearly intrigues Victoire, because she turns around to look at him, shading her eyes with one hand to better get a read on him. Albus lets her try. She’s perceptive, but there are only two people in the world that can get past his exterior when he doesn’t want them to, and neither of them is her.

“I didn’t know James was into guys,” she offers next, blatantly and unapologetically probing.

Albus leans his weight steadily back onto his palms. “Which ex-boyfriend?” he counters dryly, “If you make me guess we’ll be here for hours.”

“Dick,” says Victoire, kicking sand at him. He’s still shaking it out of his hair when she collapses on the sand next to him, her broad mess of limbs still somehow managing to land with grace. Her veela genes give her the most unfair advantage, in Albus’ humble opinion.

“Seriously,” Albus insists as he digs around in his collar for the rebellious grains of sand that will not shift, “Which one?”

Victoire pushes at his shoulder, but answers within the minute, “Teddy.”

“Oh,” says Albus, pausing in his sand quest to adopt a very knowing tone, “Not just _an_ ex-boyfriend. _The_ ex-boyfriend.”

“Fuck off,” Victoire tells him cheerily, “It’s done. I’m officially over it.”

“Well, my heartiest congratulations,” he replies in his driest, most sarcastic tone, “It’s only taken—what, seven years?”

“I’ll kick sand at you again,” she threatens.

Albus, who has no doubt she will follow through on this threat, holds both his hands up in surrender. He can still feel the remnants of the last lot trickling down into his underwear.

“So,” she presses now, bumping at his shoulder with her own, “Is it true? Are they fucking?”

Albus shrugs this time, putting every inch of indolence he possesses into it.

“You expect me to know? James is a law unto himself.”

There is a meaningful silence from Victoire. Unlike with other people, Albus feels pressured to fill it.

“It might be,” he sighs, after a long, pensive silence, “He likes who he likes. Nothing else really matters. And it’s—he’s bad at the moment, anyway. After what happened with Lily at Christmas.”

Victoire hums in acknowledgement of that. She doesn’t bother pressing Albus for full disclosure on the exact chain of events that led to a soaked James turning up on the doorstep of the Burrow on Boxing Day with the whole family gathered inside and a drenched, frozen Lily lolling lifelessly in his arms. Albus, though he would never make anybody aware, does not even have the full sequence himself. He suspects James might, but that is a private James-and-Lily thing, and just as his friends know not to press Albus on certain matters, he knows not to press his siblings on others. He always gets the feeling he’s probably better off not knowing, anyhow.

“Well,” Victoire remarks at last, blowing out a big gust of air, “I would not trade places with you for all the money in the world. My siblings are weird, but they don’t have a patch on yours.”

All Albus can do is incline his head in agreement with that.

 

* * *

 

 

Despite his promise to himself to never heed rumours about his family, Albus finds himself studying James curiously the next time he goes over to his place. Lily, skipping lessons like himself, is already clattering about in the kitchen yelling something about cake, and he and James are sat on the sofa playing Call of Duty and attempting to ignore her.

“I can _feel_ you staring at me,” says James after about ten minutes of silent animated violence, “Just bloody ask.”

Albus, against his natural instincts, does.

“Victoire says you’re fucking Teddy.”

Lily’s head sticks itself past the doorframe in astonishment.

“For real?”

“Yeah. She said last Monday.”

James’ shoulders hunch almost imperceptibly under his t-shirt, and he takes Albus’ character out with a particularly vicious chop of a knife.

“So?”

“ _So_ ,” Lily repeats in disbelief, abandoning her cooking and crashing into the sitting room, clambering over the sofa rather than going around it and knocking James’ controller out of his hands—quite on purpose, Albus is sure. “ _So_ this is _Teddy_. Teddy as in our practical _brother_ Teddy.”

James meets her eyes then, and something flashes between them that Albus hasn’t got the energy to unpick.

“It’s none of your business,” James says at last, his gaze suddenly switching to take in Albus, dark and defensive, “Neither of your businesses.”

“You didn’t tell us,” Albus replies quietly. Lily, after the briefest hesitation, nods in agreement. The problem is as simple as that. James glares at both of them, leaning back into the arm of the sofa, tall frame folded up to make space for Lily in the middle. It’s the way they are—even when frustrated with each other, they bend and flow to allow the others space to be comfortable.

“It’s not,” James begins, then lets out an irritated huff and drops his face, red curls flopping over his forehead, “It’s not a big thing. Not even a thing, not really. He gets drunk because Li—because he’s actually shit at dealing with problems, you know what he’s like. And I’m bored, and you two are stuck in school, and he’s good company when he’s not being maudlin and it’s easier than picking up someone random because they’d probably sell the story the next day.”

On the screen, utterly forgotten, Albus’ character dies an ignominious death. 

Lily has tensed further and further as James talks, her arm hard and wired up against Albus’. Minutely, hidden from James, he extends his forefinger and sinks it into her side slowly, just above her hip. She hisses out a breath and he sees her lower lip catch beneath her teeth. It has the desired effect—whatever snarling comment was about to surface is swallowed. She doesn’t turn to look at him, but she folds slightly over his finger and he withdraws it. Even Lily’s blinkered sensitivities can pick up on the bad moments to push James, if she’s given the right sort of help.

The quiet is very tense. Albus, as ever reduced to the role of peacemaker between these two volatile siblings, presses the X button on his controller.

“Just be careful,” he says calmly as the game restarts. “If the press—”

“They won’t,” replies James firmly. He bends to pick up his own controller, the tense lines of his muscles straightening out under his shirt. Out of the corner of his eye, Albus sees Lily lean in to press her forehead against James’ shoulder in silence. Feigning disinterest, he chooses a new gun. Seconds later, Lily has withdrawn and scrambled up, knocking both of them about with knees she is perfectly capable of keeping to herself should she be so inclined. The tension drains out as they both recoil and swear at her, and she trips off into the kitchen laughing.

James and Albus play in silence for a few moments longer.

“So what’s this about a party for Rose,” James asks suddenly, and Albus lets out a long, drawn groan.

“Do not. It’s been murder avoiding the planning.”

“I’m invited,” James says proudly, like sloping back to Hogwarts for a party is something to be _excited_ about.

Albus rolls his eyes. “Oh. Fantastic. You with access to a castle full of underage schoolgirls. What could possibly go wrong.” His voice is heavy with sarcasm. James, as he takes Albus’ character out with a magnificent long-range sniper shot, smirks so widely Albus can practically _hear_ it.

 

* * *

 

 

Despite Lily’s best efforts, the cake ends up as a complete disaster and James’ kitchen rather akin to a war zone, if the ammunition was all chocolate. James laughs so hard that Lily tackles him to the ground and pins him there, slowly and evilly rubbing her chocolate-covered hands through his hair, grinding cake mixture into his scalp until his hair is sticking up at the craziest angles and they’re both laughing, chocolate all over both their faces.

Albus, propped up against the one clean bit of side, watches them, chuckling. By the time they stop, the only part of Lily’s face still showing is a freckled patch on her right cheek and her glittering eyes and she has a large, dark handprint on either bare thigh where James has grabbed her. She’s laughing so hard she can barely breathe, chest jabbing in and out as she gasps for air. James beneath her is not in much better condition, laughing in sharp gusts as he struggles to get the oxygen in, chocolate smeared like warpaint up both cheeks and into his hair.

“You’re both insane,” says Albus at last, shaking his head as they both turn to look at him. They’re grinning, wide and disarming, and they suddenly look very dangerous to him. They flip so quickly, these two, a constant push and pull of anger and exhilaration. If he didn’t love them quite so much, would he be willing to keep up with them?

“Don’t go,” Lily murmurs, still breathless and heaving, “You’re drifting.”

Albus returns his full attention to the moment and simply looks down at them. Calming now, indolent and satisfied, they look back. James’ hands slide slowly back onto Lily’s thighs, etching calming circles there, the action entirely absent-minded. She settles immediately, the response ingrained, her hammering breath steadying.

God, for this to be their entire lives, Albus thinks. Innocence and chocolate and daft fun. No bitchy columns in newspapers or magazines, no outside interest in them at all.

“Brown hair suits you much better than blonde, Lil,” he comments finally, the hint of a grin twitching at the corners of his mouth.

“Not nearly as much as red,” James interjects before Lily can react. She whirls on him with a hiss, and Albus laughs and beats a hasty retreat. Lily’s hair is a particularly touchy subject, and she picked a fight with him not two days previously about it. He has no intention of getting swept up in the same disagreement within a week. Once is quite enough.

 

* * *

 

Lily saunters into breakfast at school six mornings later, not having been seen in the castle since the week before, with her long hair dripping wet down her back. It takes Albus, over at the Gryffindor table, a moment to notice its colour. Bright red once more, it tangles sodden and unstyled around her freckled little face, and Albus grins privately. Lily catches his eye from across the hall and tips him a lazy wink, then slides out of his view into a seat at the Slytherin table.

Albus’ attention is abruptly diverted by somebody claiming the seat next to him, and resists the urge to sigh deeply.

“Molly,” he says coldly, “I’ve told you once, I don’t want to tell you again. I am _not_ running around to—”

“Actually,” she butts in, magnificently undaunted by his icy tone, “It’s not about Rose’s party. It’s about Scorpius. I thought you might like to know I’ve just found him crying in your dorm. I tried to ask what was wrong but he told me to fuck off, so I think you’d probably better go.”

Albus would like to pretend his stomach doesn’t sink into his shoes, but he’d be lying. He knows that Molly has noticed how quickly he scrambles out of his seat at the table, but for maybe the first time in her life she makes no comment at all, simply turns and engages the nearest person in conversation, no matter that she has never spoken to them before.

Albus curses how quickly he makes it to Gryffindor Tower, curses himself even as he’s taking the steps two at a time, curses himself as he yanks at the door to the common room and slips inside breathlessly, smoker’s lungs aching from his dash. His eyes dive straight for Scorpius’ bed, and he picks out the long, elegant form buried in the cushions before a second has passed.

“Scorp,” he says, and god does he hate how anguished he sounds, “Scorpius, Molly said—”

“Fuck off,” comes the muffled interruption. The thickness of tears in Scorpius’ voice is something new, something entirely foreign to Albus, and he kind of wants to take a moment to absorb and acknowledge the strange tight newness of Scorpius given over to weeping. It’s not a thing he ever thought he’d face past those lonely few months in first year before they found a steady friendship in one another.

Albus takes a deep breath and paces across the room to sit on Scorpius’ bed. He slips and slides on the small mountain of cushions that cover it, and almost puts a hand on Scorpius’ back before thinking better of it.

“Tell me what’s wrong,” he says to the white-blond back of his best friend’s head. Scorpius’ shoulders are shuddering, his whole body sprawled limp and loose-limbed like a faun driven to exhaustion by a hunt. Albus hates that half his mind is cataloguing the sheer abandon of Scorpius like this, hates that he ought to be focused only on how he can help to alleviate his friend’s suffering but instead is noticing the unconscious grace of Scorpius collapsed in despair over his bed. Surrender, he has to admit, suits him far more than he ever expected.

A few shivering breaths later, Scorpius mutters the confession into his pillow. Albus cannot hear it even a little, and remains silent as he waits to hear the secret repeated. Slowly, miserably, Scorpius slants his head, wet lips open to gasp against the white pillowcase, eyes red-rimmed and agonising in their misery.

“My parents,” he chokes out, “Are divorcing.”

Albus breathes in sharply. Marriages have broken up around them their entire lives—two sets of Albus’ aunts and uncles, one of Scorpius’, teachers and the parents of friends and figures of interest in the media, some of them almost as hounded as the Potters themselves. But Scorpius’ parents were always rocks, an astonishingly close marriage built on affection and respect and support. Even Albus’ parents spit and hiss sometimes, his mother flaring up and his father retreating in cold, shocked dismay. But Mr and Mrs Malfoy—they were supposed to be a solid base point against which to measure success in marriage.

And now they are divorcing.

Albus finds his voice at last.

“But… _why_?”

Scorpius breathes out thickly through his mouth, blowing the air out in utter defeat.

“You know the Nott girl?”

Albus’ mind jumps straight to Lily’s friend. “Helena?”

“Well, yeah. I was thinking the one in our year but it’s all the same.”

Albus races through the endless faces of his yearmates, trying to settle on—yes. Of course. Andrea Nott. Ravenclaw. Small and quiet and a worried, sensible counterpoint to the daftness of her younger sister and odd burning roar of her two older siblings. They’d been potions partners for one disastrous lesson back in second year.

“What about her?” he asks once he has successfully categorised her mentally. Scorpius’ angry, bloodshot eyes meet his now, and he enunciates each word from behind perfectly white, clamped-together teeth.

“Her dad? Been fucking mine for three years now.”

Albus has never been more thankful for the life that has taught him to control every instinctual reaction to a shocking piece of news. So instead of jumping up, or gasping, or demanding details, he simply holds his friend’s gaze.

“Shit, Scorp,” he replies sincerely, “I’m sorry.”

Blowing out another grim breath, Scorpius heaves himself onto his back. A tear on his right cheek finds itself consumed by gravity again, and Albus watches its progress down the heated red of his face in something like fascination.

“They were friends at school,” Scorpius elaborates, and though he’s trying to keep his tone careful and clipped and drawling, as is his usual habit of speech, there are tremors shot through it that he cannot suppress. “Dad wrote me. Said they probably would have been something more, but then he got caught up with—well, you know. The war and stuff. And then Dad met Mum, and married her, and Nott married someone else, and now two sets of kids and twenty-three years of marriage each are behind them and they’ve decided to pack us all in.”

Albus chooses his next words with care. Scorpius is like Lily with these things—one wrong phrase in a situation like this and he’ll blow up at you.

“I don’t think your dad would do that. Pack you in, I mean. He—he loves you, man. Like, properly.”

“They’re moving in together,” says Scorpius tonelessly, staring straight up at the hangings on his bed, “Into our house. Dad says he wants Mum and me to stay, but she’s already gone back to Nan’s.”

Suddenly his eyes focus again, and his gaze slants down towards Albus, the faintest hint of his customary wicked sparkle flaring up for one bright, hopeful moment, “Good news is William and Cassia Nott took this information even worse than me and went and trashed the place.” He frowns now, his eyes diverting absently back up to the canopy, “Fuck, I don’t want them for step-siblings. They’re so _angry_ all the time.”

“Funny, though,” Albus points out fairly. Scorpius heaves a great, listless shrug. His eyes have dulled again, vacant grey-green still staring up and up and up. Albus doesn’t know what to say. He truly doesn’t. What is there that he could, anyway?

“Fuck this whole thing, man,” Scorpius says suddenly, not looking at Albus, “This whole shitty life. If people aren’t pissing you off then they’re disappointing you.”

There’s not a thing in the world Albus can say to argue with that. He’s got proof in his life—Lily and James, endless constants of delight—but Scorpius has no siblings, has only a few cousins that he hates, and deals with at least one idiot a month who has not learnt not to hold the son accountable for the sins of the father.

“Look,” he tells Scorpius instead, voice rising firmly, “Fuck it. It’s Rose’s party tonight. Let’s go and get absolutely smashed.”

Scorpius’ eyes dive down towards his, and something lights in them for a flickering moment.

“Seriously,” he replies, that drawl creeping back in, “You’d do that, Potter. You’d go to that party for me.”

Albus shrugs, big and careless. “Sure. Let’s sack off lessons. It’s double Charms today anyway. There’s a Quidditch match in Bristol, Rowle can get us in. Let’s go and just leave all this shit behind, yeah? Then we can come back tonight for the party.”

Scorpius barely deliberates. He’s on his feet before Albus is, unhampered by the mass of cushions that always drags Albus down. His cheeks are still flushed and damp, hair matted and curling at the nape of his neck.

“You’re a legend, Potter,” he announces, and claps a hand onto Albus’ shoulder with a tight grin before turning to claim the bathroom and sort his appearance out. Albus watches him go, trying to ignore the sharp note of delight to have caused such pleasure that is flaring up in his gut.

He fails.


	2. Perihelion

By the time they arrive at Rose’s party that night, it is in full swing and they are truly and totally hammered. Scorpius is so drunk his usually sharp eyes have turned flat and unfocused, and he collars an ecstatic fifth year Hufflepuff almost instantly and bears her off to dance. Albus, swaying slightly, watches him go unashamedly. God. If they gave prizes for beauty, Scorpius would get the gold every time.

Someone slams hard into him next, and Albus stumbles backwards in astonishment. Lily, laughing, catches at his shirt to keep him on his feet.

“Christ,” she says merrily, “You _are_ drunk.”

Albus makes a face down at her, but before his slow brain can put anything together she’s tugging him onto the dance floor. Albus spots James almost immediately, already with his tongue down the throat of a girl on the Ravenclaw quidditch team, and rolls his eyes. Lily, as ever, goes one better, and in a quick effortless movement that hints she is much less drunk than most other people in the room, whirls and slashes with her wand. On the wall way above everyone’s heads appears a large chart, and Albus throws back his head to roar with laughter as he realises it’s a tally. There are already sixteen names up there, with James halfway down.

“He’s on two already?” he shouts over the music, and Lily grins tightly.

“Still miles behind Piper Macleod. She’s on five.”

“ _Golly_ ,” replies Albus, in his most pompous voice, “Standards really are slipping.”

Lily laughs properly then, and whatever lingering irritation was lurking in the corners of her face smooths out.

“Dance, arsehole,” she commands, and Albus obeys.

Most of the rest of the night passes in a blur. James’ tally creeps up to three, but stalls there. Albus notices this with astonishment, and actually goes to check that his brother is okay and not passed out in a corner somewhere. He finds him sat on a chair in the corner of the room glaring in a somewhat unfocused manner at where Lily is wrapped around a boy in the year above her.

Albus is about to tell James to get over it when he spots the birthday girl bearing down on him from the other side of the room and has to flee into the crowd.

He proceeds to dance for an incredibly energetic twenty minutes with his cousin Dominique, who has snuck back into Hogwarts with James. Dominique doesn’t seem particularly thrilled about his presence, but then Dominique never seems particularly thrilled about anything, and as she hasn’t told him to fuck off even once Albus suspects that she’s secretly rather enjoying herself.

Rose almost corners him again coming out of the loos down the corridor later on, but fortunately a drunken friend of hers seizes her and drags her back off to the party. Gusting out a great sigh of relief at this narrow escape, Albus slips back in and goes in search of his drunken brother once more.

He finds James halfway to picking a fight with the boy Lily had been getting off with—Lily herself nowhere in sight, naturally—and interposes himself calmly.

“Alright, Coote?” he says levelly to the guy, “I’d clear off.”

Coote bristles, broad beater’s shoulders tensing, but heeds the warning before a minute is out. Even someone as strong as him wouldn’t pick a fight with James Potter in this kind of mood, with his brother at his side ready to back him up. Once Albus is satisfied that he’s gone, he turns and shoves James rather carelessly into a chair.

“Seriously,” he orders, grabbing a glass of water off a passing Slytherin and forcing it on James, “You have got to stop beating guys up just because they dare touch Lily. The stories sell, James, you can’t—”

Mutinously, James stops chugging the water long enough to interrupt, “Piss off, Al. It’s none of your business.”

“It is,” he insists, refilling James’ glass with a lopsided Aguamenti spell and collapsing into the seat next to him. “If I can stop even one more story about you getting into _Razzi_ , I’m going to fucking do it.”

“I’m going to find her,” James replies suddenly, indicating that he’s probably not been listening at all. He gets halfway to his feet before Albus fists a hand in his shirt and pulls him sharply back down.

“You are not. Sit down. You’ve gotta stay and protect me in case Rose comes over.”

James makes an obvious effort to focus. He turns his whole upper body, broad shoulders crashing into Albus’, eyes narrowed and bleary.

“You should make up with her.”

“You’re giving life advice now,” Albus responds in his driest tone, “Seriously? You. The guy who can barely stay on a _chair_.”

James rights himself and adopts an air of thoroughly injured dignity.

“I can too stay. And I’m right. That’s why you’re being defensive. Because I’m right and you should make up with her.”

Albus drops the sarcasm. “I don’t want to, alright? Leave it.”

James makes a face that could be either smug or frustrated—the expressions become quite interchangeable when he’s this drunk—and leans back against his chair, sipping his water.

“Hey,” he says quite suddenly a few minutes later, “Isn’t that Neville?”

Albus, with this much alcohol inside him, takes a moment or two to catch on.

“Neville who?” he asks blearily, mostly expecting James to launch into some wild story about some kid he did something stupid with once. Instead, James drops his water.

“Shit!” he exclaims, scrambling to his feet, “Aw, shit, it is! Fuck, Al, get me out—fuck, quickly! He said he’d tell Dad about that thing with the goose and Romola Bulstrode if he caught me in Hogwarts uninvited again!”

As if summoned by the weight of James’ panic, Lily appears out of the crowd just as several other professors join Neville and the party explodes into chaos.

“This way,” she pants at them both, and grabs their wrists to set off at a sprint. Most of the party-goers are headed for the big doors, which the teachers are fast blocking to keep everybody inside for punishment. Lily, however, yanks both her brothers to the very back of the room and then drops them to pace back and forth furiously in front of a bare stretch of wall. James and Albus, both intimately familiar with the Room of Requirement as only regular rule-breakers can really be, press their shoulders together to block her from the view of the panicked students behind them. The Potters twigged a long time ago that a secret escape only stays secret if you don’t let anybody else spot it. They are not, unfortunately, unselfish enough to mind leaving everybody else to fend for themselves.

Reacting to Lily’s desires, the room brings forth a small door in the wall in front of the three of them, and they are through it and safe in a corridor six floors down before six seconds have passed. Behind them, the smooth wall shows no sign of the door they have come through, and Albus heaves a great sigh of relief.

“Rose is _so_ busted,” Lily says sorrowfully.

“Technically it’s not her party,” James reminds her, “She didn’t organise it. It’s just her birthday.”

“She’ll take the fall,” Albus remarks emotionlessly, “It’s _Rose_.”

As the three of them turn to head for the nearest secret passage out of the castle, to apparate from there to the comfort and safety of James’ flat, Lily steps up to stride right alongside Albus.

“Forgive her,” she commands quietly, tucking one small pale hand into his, “It wasn’t her fault. She didn’t know how you felt about Scorpius.”

“ _Everybody_ knew,” Albus retorts, pulling his hand coldly out of her grip. “You never let me fucking forget it.”

“We knew,” counters James calmly, stepping up to Albus’ other side, his tall solid presence somehow reassuring despite his inherent aptitude for trouble, “Because we always know you. Inside out. But the others—they didn’t, Al. Maybe Molly. Probably Victoire. But none of the rest.”

“Fuck off,” Albus tells him mutinously.

Lily pushes her hand back into his and grips tight enough to grind his knuckles together.

“No. Stop taking your anger out on us. It’s not about us. It’s about you and her.”

Albus, trying to make out like his eyes aren’t watering with pain, clamps his jaw shut tightly. He is sure they are reading his irritation as easily as breathing.

“Can’t you two ever just leave well enough alone?” he demands after a moment or two of silent fuming. On either side of him, Lily and James crack identical grins. Their replies, when they come, are inflected with exactly the same level of irritating insouciance.

“Nope!”

 

 

 

 

 

 

For the sake of peace of mind and, frankly, because he is tired of being at odds with one of the few people he genuinely likes, Albus heeds his siblings’ orders a few weeks later and seeks Rose out in the common room. The word is that she’s still serving Wednesday night detentions after taking the fall for her party, so Albus lingers by the door about the time Neville always lets students leave to catch her.

She looks so surprised to see him when she walks in through the portrait hole that he feels sort of guilty, for a horrible moment, for having ignored and avoided her for so long. They were thick as thieves during their first couple of years here, them and Scorpius, and now here he is with at least eighteen months since he entertained a proper conversation with her.

“Are you totally stuck for other options or something?” she inquires after a brief hesitation, busying herself tucking her scarf back into her bag, “Because I’m sure Lily’s down in Slytherin, you could—”

“I want to talk to you,” Albus interrupts her. Her hands still. It feels like an age before she looks up at him. She is… serious. That’s the best word Albus can find for it. Brows drawn together, lips thinned, the freckles on her nose scrunched up and worried. Not serious in her usual calm responsible way, but a different kind of serious altogether. The kind of serious that presages a big moment.

She says nothing. Albus huffs out a breath and looks down at his feet, scuffing the side of one shoe against the red carpet for a moment or two. To put it plainly, he’s never sincerely apologised for anything in his life, and he isn’t really sure how to start now.

“Shall we—” Rose begins suddenly. She stops for a second, then soldiers on, “Why don’t we walk and talk? It’s probably easier.”

Albus sucks in a breath and considers for a moment or two.

“Yeah. Yes, please. Let’s do that.”

They end up going up, climbing as many staircases as they come across. Their breath comes faster, and Albus is glad of the excuse to stay silent. He knows it is only a matter of time, though. Give Rose a conversation topic and she’ll shake it until it snaps, like a terrier with a rat between its teeth. She does it cleverly, but she does it all the same.

“So,” she says with a bit of a puff, drawing level as they come out somewhere near the bottom of the Astronomy Tower, “What do you want to talk about?”

Albus has not been looking forward to this part. It’s the point at which he has to come clean about a facet of himself he doesn’t much like, which is one of his least favourite activities. So he clears his throat a couple of times, looks down at his feet, and confesses.

“I’m sorry. I’ve been a dick. This last—I dunno, forever. I should have let it go.” He pulls in a breath for a moment, then adds thoughtfully, “I mean, actually I think I was justified being angry for a while. But I should have let it go sooner.”

Rose doesn’t say anything. When Albus sneaks a glance across at her she’s staring forward pensively. She’s worrying her bottom lip ever-so-slightly, her long legs striding on with such effortless strength that Albus is actually having to hurry a little to keep pace. She’s the only girl in the family that’s of a height with him—almost tall enough to look James square in the eye—and though usually it’s easy to forget there are times like this one when she uses her height to be incredibly intimidating.

She’s just _walking_ , Albus reminds himself firmly. And he was right to be angry at her. Or at least it was fair enough that he was. But still he can practically hear the gears in her head whirring, and knowing the full force of that sharp mind means it’s a little hard not to be frightened when all that intelligence is turned on you.

But then she takes a deep breath, glances over at him, and says, “You’re right.”

Albus tries for levity. “About which bit?”

Rose allows it, grins slightly, bumps his elbow with her own, “Both. You should have let it go sooner. But what I did was shit, and you didn’t deserve it.”

Albus agrees with that, so he says nothing more. Rose is worrying at her lip again, and he can tell there’s something more she wants to say. His experience is that a silence coaxes up more truth than the best-worded sentence, so he stays quiet in the hopes that she will get whatever it is she wants to say out.

“Look, I’m sorry,” she declares at last, looking him dead in the eye. Her voice has the most urgent ring of earnestness to it. Albus, not for the first time, considers what a first-rate public speaker she will be when she finally decides which campaign she cares most about. She could get even him—infamously disinterested in everything—to care about captive dragons or melting ice caps or whatever.

“Me too, I know, you said that before,” he replies, though it’s a bit of a babble and he’s not really sure which one he started out meaning to say.

“You didn’t listen before,” she counters, “And I didn’t mean it so much then. I had no idea, really, Al. I had no clue you liked him. I didn’t realise until James told me, about three weeks later, when I was mad because you were avoiding me.  Scorpius didn’t say anything, he didn’t—”

“He doesn’t know,” Albus reminds her, very firmly not looking at her, because this still hurts to say, “And he won’t ever. He’s made it immensely clear that he’s not into guys, and I’m not going to fuck up our friendship on a pointless infatuation.”

Rose looks very much like she’s about to inject some advice about that, but fortunately masters herself.

“Well,” she says at last, “I’m sorry all the same. If I’d known I never would have done it. I was—I was sixteen. He was the boy everybody wanted. Other than James, anyway. And I—if it’s any consolation, I didn’t like it.”

Albus lifts one eyebrow in perfectly-calculated disbelief. Scorpius is unreliable with silencing charms, and the number of times Albus and the other boys in the dorm have been woken up by peaking female pleasure is more than he cares to count. He’s usually not the first one to swear at Scorpius, but he _is_ always the first to do the silencing charm himself. Whatever Scorpius is up to in there, it always sounds very much like the girls are enjoying it immensely.

Rose catches the eyebrow, and suddenly she’s laughing, tucking the sound behind a hand. Albus glances across at her in surprise.

“I’m sorry,” she forces out between giggles, “It’s just—I mean, he’s good at what he does. No need to be offended on his behalf or anything. The…mechanics of it seemed on-point. But I just don’t think it’s for me. Sex in general, I mean, not just sex with Scorpius. Doesn't really…do anything, you know?”

Albus isn’t really sure what to say to that. He can’t really imagine sex not being interesting—but then this is Rose, endlessly sure and assured Rose, and if she says it’s not then it’s not for her. She’s not one for making weighted declarations without being confident in them.

“Well,” he replies after a moment, “Uncle Ron’ll probably collapse in relief.”

Rose laughs again, head thrown back in delight.

“Probably. I’ll put it on a card for him.”

They walk longer. It’s _easy_ , the pair of them. Albus had forgotten how much simple pleasure there was to be gained from Rose’s company. She’s so quick, so clever, and her mind moves in such astounding ways. She always has the most fascinating opinions on things. By the time they round the corner and come back into sight of Gryffindor Tower, she’s expostulating on the treatment of merfolk in the Caribbean, eyes alight and hands making excited shapes in the air around her. Albus finds himself abruptly _minding_ that merfolk are being used as a tourist attraction, so much so that he actually signs the petition she produces from her schoolbag without even a single sarcastic comment.

“We should,” he begins once they are back in the common room and she is bent over her bag, tucking the petition away carefully, “Um, I mean, you want to get breakfast together tomorrow? You should tell me more about those Hippogriffs.”

She looks confused for a moment, but then her face clears. She’s abruptly bashful and pleased, ducking her head the way her father always does when her mother says something unexpectedly admiring.

“You heard me talking about that? It was weeks ago.”

“I’ve been feeling bad for much longer than I let on,” Albus admits with a quick grin. “Let me make it up to you. There’s that march, I think you said? You were talking to Ellis about it.”

“Yeah,” Rose agrees, looking quietly pleased, “We’re going to sneak out from her dad’s office. His fireplace is connected to their house and we can apparate from there. Her mum’s in on it.”

Albus knows that most people consider Rose a paragon of virtue when it comes to following school rules. Albus, on the other hand, is well acquainted with her talent for circumventing them. Since her rule-breaking mostly involves sneaking off-campus for rallies and speeches and the like she gets away with almost everything—especially since she has enough family members committing blatant and attention-seeking misdemeanours on school grounds.

“I take it Neville’s not in on it, then?” he inquires. Rose makes a “pfft” noise.

“Can you imagine? When they’re at home Ellis can get him to do _anything_ but at school he’s so strict. It’s so funny. She went to him the other week actually to try to get permission to take her apparition test again but he said no before she’d even finished the sentence. She cried and everything. But nada.”

“He’s hardcore,” Albus agrees with a laugh. He likes Neville enormously because he’s so straightforward, but it is weird switching from “Uncle Neville” during the holidays back to “Professor Longbottom” during the term. He also knows that he and his siblings—and probably Rose and Hugo too—are allowed to get away with much more than any of the Longbottom kids. Neville tries so hard to not play favourites that he ends up treating his own children with rather more strictness than is probably fair, and Albus can’t even count the number of times he’s gone down to Slytherin to visit Lily and found Florian throwing a fit because his dad has denied him something that everyone else is allowed. Albus enjoys being around Lily immensely for moments like this, because she always slides to sit next to Florian and says with such unnerving sweetness something about being allowed to get away with an action she should not have been. Florian always goes the most ecstatically angry shade of red at that point.

“Anyway, d’you want to come?” Rose offers, distracting him from his thoughts. She’s looking at him with careful hope. He can recognise the peace branch extended between them, and takes it without a second thought.

“Love to. A Potter showing up should be good for publicity, right? I _think_ we’re still relevant.”

“Oh, you are,” Rose assures him with a grandly airy wave, “Didn’t you see the Prophet this morning? Someone’s leaked about James and Teddy. My friend who works there says there’ll be a big follow-up tomorrow. They’re still convinced Vic’s got a thing for Teddy so it’s all going to be about her jealousy. Apparently she hexed James so hard he can’t walk.”

“Hm,” says Albus thoughtfully, “That’s odd, considering I had a letter from James just this morning saying how fine and able to walk he was.”

Rose laughs again. This is what Albus has missed about her—her ability to make the scathing gossip pieces seem like the daftest, most irrelevant thing imaginable. To make them seem like nothing.

“James needs to start keeping it in his pants,” she comments as they head over to their respective staircases, “One day he’s going to stick it in something and get it bitten off.”

“It would serve him right, too,” Albus replies blithely. There is a brief moment where they both think about hugging, but at the last minute Albus bottles it and heads for his dorm instead.

“Night!” Rose calls after him, ever-forgiving, and Albus tosses an equally cheery, “Night!” back down to her.

When he arrives in his dorm there is indeterminate rustling coming from behind Scorpius’ hangings, so Albus saves the whole dorm some earache and casts a silencing charm on them before he’s got two paces into the room.

He barely has the energy to change into his pyjamas and brush his teeth before he collapses into bed. His last thought, before he drifts off, is one of overwhelming relief.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The news about James and Teddy is everywhere the next day. It always strikes Albus harder on occasions like this how much their lives seem to _matter_ to people. He can never understand it. Who gives a fuck if James wants to screw Teddy? It was their dad that saved the world, not them. All they’ve done is been born and now every like and dislike is relevant, somehow. Albus hates it. He doesn’t think he hates it as much as James has always hated it, but he still hates it.

He seeks out Lily before the end of the day just for some peace and quiet. Even as he’s walking to the quiet spot in the grounds she always retreats to on this sort of occasion, some Hufflepuff kid hails Albus from across the grass with a cry of, “Oi, Potter, who’s gonna carry on the family name now?!” Albus considers stopping the boy with a hex and explaining to him a few things about the fluidity of sexuality and surrogacy and adoption and also that if anybody thinks Lily is giving up her surname for a guy then they’ve got another thing coming, but he rather suspects he would be wasting his breath.

So he tramps on, ignoring the idiot, and finds Lily hunkered down behind the pumpkin patch that backs onto Hagrid’s hut. Their cousin Louis is there too, crammed between two enormous pumpkins for some reason and tapping away furiously at a laptop.

Albus flops down onto the grass without even a hello. Lily wordlessly extends the bottle she’s holding to him. Taking an experimental swig, Albus discovers that it’s some horrible concoction of brandy and fruit juice—not pumpkin, thank god—and grimaces as he hands it back.

“I know,” Lily says sadly. “Elliot can’t do an alcohol run until the weekend. We’re almost out.”

“You’re going to get that man fired,” Albus tells her. Professor Elliot is new to the staff this year, a quietly sarcastic young man who’s sort of apprenticed to the potions professor before he goes off to presumably further his career elsewhere. Lily and her little Slytherin crew had been so astonishingly admiring of him by Christmas that Albus had had to get to the bottom of the reason why. He’d found out about three months ago that Elliot was about as irreverent and generally annoyed as they all were constantly, and that the crew had sort of adopted him in return for him bringing them in alcohol when he goes home.

Albus still isn’t sure what Elliot gets out of the deal, really. It seems a lot to risk a career for five sixteen year old girls who’d turn on you as soon as look at you.

“I think it’s worth it for him,” Lily replies thoughtfully, taking a long pull and offering the bottle to Louis, who takes it without looking up, “All the staff here are so much older than him, he needs cool people to hang out with.”

“You hang out with him?” Albus asks, “Seriously? _Why_?”

“He’s funny,” Lily tells him defensively, “I like him. He reminds me of Celyn, only meaner.”

This would probably explain a lot. Lily has always been disarmingly impressed by the oldest Longbottom, apt as she is to be unimpressed by everything. To be fair, Celyn impresses even Albus. He’s so cool and so witty and so quick in an argument that it’s a bit frightening.

“She’s not sleeping with him,” Louis announces suddenly from behind the screen of his laptop, pushing his glasses up his nose and grinning across at Albus, “That was my first assumption too.”

“Arsehole,” Lily exclaims, “And I shared my alcohol with you.”

“It’s a fair assumption,” Albus points out. Lily pulls her wand out from the waistband of her skirt and waves it at him.

“I’ll hex you,” she threatens. Albus just rolls his eyes. Louis laughs and reaches out to grab her wand, pulling it so the tip of it is pointed at his laptop.

“Put it to good use, snakey,” he orders, “I need that charm Helena stole off her sister. The internet one.”

Lily mutters grimly, “I _told_ you about calling me that,” but she’s already looping her wand in neat little spirals and frowning, getting the words ordered up on her tongue. Albus watches with interest. As Lily incants, Louis continues pushing at keys, pausing only to push his glasses back up and thread a hand through his hair, pulling his blond curls off his face. Victoire keeps commenting that if he doesn’t cut them himself then she’s going to do it by force, but Louis seems to like them long. They suit him, in a hipster-hacker kind of way.

“We’re connected!” exclaims Louis a couple of quiet moments later. Lily finishes off the charm with a neat little swish and then crowds excitedly around to see the screen.

“Come out of the pumpkins, you dickhead,” she orders, barely waiting for Louis to start shuffling before she’s pulling the laptop screen around. The shadows caused by the enormous fruit block the late May sun and make it possible to read the screen.

“What are you searching for?” Albus inquires, reaching for the alcohol once more. Lily ignores him, already typing something into the search bar.

“Teddy and James,” Louis explains, extending a hand out for the drink. Albus surrenders it without complaint. “Lily wanted to see what the full extent of the story is.”

“Just ask James,” Albus suggests, “Wouldn’t he be the best source?”

“He’d be weird about telling me,” Lily replies without looking up, “And anyway it’s not about what’s actually happening, it’s about what the gossips are saying. Oh, look.”

She appears to have found precisely what they’re saying because her face goes very still. Without a word, she swivels the screen around to show Albus. Ducking to get a better view, Albus finds two paparazzi shots—one of Teddy looking staid as ever, colour-coordinated sweater-shirt combo and all, and one of James looking intensely unfriendly with a cigarette hanging out of his mouth and a new tattoo crawling up his left arm.

“Harry Potter’s eldest son sleeps with Harry Potter’s godson,” Albus reads in a flat tone, “They really are keeping it in the family.”

There is a brief silence. Louis turns the laptop around to get a proper look himself.

“I miss Teddy’s punk days,” he says sadly, cocking his head at the two pictures, “He was such a legend. Now he looks like he belongs in some advertisement for the perfect family man.”

“He was mostly being a punk to impress your sister,” Lily points out, pulling the laptop back towards herself to dig further, “When they broke up he retreated to his true self.”

“Well his true self never gets me weed when I ask for it,” Louis grumps, leaning back against a pumpkin, “Which is lame, because I _know_ he still has contacts.”

Albus isn’t really sure what to say to that. He’s not so sure that marijuana is what he’d like to be discussing right now. From the way Lily flicks her eyes up at him from behind the laptop, he can tell it’s not what she wants either.

“D’you think James is alright?” he asks of her. She gives a great shrug that is trying far too hard to be careless.

“Yeah. There weren’t any, like, _proper_ feelings there. Not for James at least. I don’t know about Teddy. It was just—” she pauses for a moment to find the right word, “—safe. You know? Teddy’d never be a dick about it.”

There is another silence. Neither Albus nor Lily says what they are both thinking—that James is perfectly capable of being a dick about everything, should he put his mind to it.

“Still,” Lily says thoughtfully, “James is going to be pissed off that it’s everywhere. You know he hates people being in his business.”

“You’d think he’d be used to it,” Louis notes, shifting to the right to get into a patch of sunlight. It catches his hair like spun gold. “I mean, you guys, you’re always in the papers. There was an article on you last week, Lil.”

She looks up. “Me?”

Louis grins. “Yeah. About some outfit you wore for something. I don’t know, I didn’t read it all the way through. Apparently somebody called Gloria thought it was frightful.”

Lily’s brows slant down into a dangerous V.

“That _bitch_ ,” she says furiously, “Just because I don’t spend a bajillion galleons on dresses for things she thinks that justifies her saying I’ve got no style. I’ve got style.”

Albus pats her knee reassuringly. “You’ve got a tonne of style. But, look, don’t you think we should go check on James?”

Lily closes the laptop with a snap. Her face is very still again—a sure sign she is feeling something that she doesn’t wish to be feeling.

“No,” she says calmly, “I don’t. He made this bed, he can stew in it.”

Both Albus and Louis look at her in surprise for a moment or two. Lily is usually the first to leap to James’ defence—often has to be forcibly restrained from marching up and ripping throats out for daring to speak ill of him, in fact. The line of her shoulders is very hard and very straight, however, and both Albus and Louis can read the warning not to pry as clearly as though she’d written it on a sign.

The silence is awkward for the first time since Albus arrived, so to break it he takes another mammoth swig of alcohol.

“Fuck it,” he decides at last, “I’m going to get drunk. Who wants to come?”

“I won’t,” says Louis, levering himself up off the ground and extending a hand out for his laptop, “I’m still on shaky ground after hacking that oil company for Rose, so I have to be on my best behaviour. But you kids have fun.”

Lily says something rude and affectionate to him and then he heads off with a cheery wave, indomitable as ever. Albus thinks quite a lot about how nice it must be to be Louis. So damned easy. Handsome, magnetic, talented—life just seems to rush up to be good to him. A lot of the time it doesn’t feel very fair.

But then Louis doesn’t have Lily and James in every corner with him, Albus is reminded as his sister’s hand slips under his and takes the bottle off him.

“C’mon,” she orders, “I’ve still got Dom’s old ID. Let’s go somewhere Muggle. I can’t deal with magic folk tonight.”

Albus decides that that sounds like the best idea imaginable.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Nikolai Elliot (the potions assistant) is a creation of AJ [draconisms](http://draconisms.tumblr.com/), and I'm so grateful to be allowed to borrow him!


	3. Equinox

He thinks Lily stays drunk for about five days. The next time he sees her after their night out together she’s sat in the corridor outside one of the potions classrooms looking mutinous. He’s on his way to his own lesson, incredibly late, but pauses regardless.

“You didn’t get kicked out again?” he demands in exasperation. That would make about the sixth time this month.

“Redwood’s a dick,” she responds, rolling her head against the wall in a manner that suggests hearty amounts of alcohol sloshing through her system, “She said I was being disruptive.”

“I have no doubt you were,” Albus points out. Lily’s ability to be disruptive is unmatched by any of her classmates but for her small group of friends. Speaking of which, there’s a loud shout from inside the classroom followed by the door crashing open, Sophie Parkinson being dragged out by the collar of her robes by Professor Redwood, and then abandoned next to Lily in the corridor. Redwood’s almost gone purple.

“You can both _stay out there_ until the lesson ends, and then we are going to the headmistress!”

Sophie, insolent as it is humanely possible to be, slings herself back against the wall and then, maintaining eye contact the entire time, slides down the stone to sit next to Lily. Albus has to turn away to stifle laughter. He should have known it would be Parkinson. She’s near as volatile as Lily, in her own way, and Alice Selwyn isn’t in their potions class to keep them both calm. Without her they’re a pair of chimeras, vicious and merciless.

Redwood mutters something that sounds very like a swearword and then returns back to her classroom, slamming the door resoundingly.

“Alright?” Sophie inquires of Albus, giving him a slow nod, “Lost, are we?”

“Late, actually,” Albus corrects, shouldering his bag a little higher, “Got distracted.”

Sophie angles her head to consider this. It looks for a moment like she might say something, but then she just makes this little “hm” noise and drops her chin to her chest. Her hair—dyed purple, which is new—falls forward to obscure her face. Lily watches this with the kind of fascination that only appears when she is drunk off her arse.

“Jesus, Lily,” Albus says in exasperation, “Have you sobered up since Friday?”

She heaves a shrug.

“Not been keeping track.”

Albus narrows his eyes down at her. Although Lily is often drunk, it is incredibly rare to find her this drunk for this long. In fact, he’s pretty sure it’s only happened twice before—once when James went into hospital after a car accident, and the other for a reason he’s still not privy to. It worries him. It suggests that something is going on with his sister other than simple teenage angst.

He teeters for a moment. He wants to _fix_ her—and there’s always that need with Lily. Always has been. A driving protective need to find out what is causing her grief and fight it, put her fires out. It’s a slow-dawning process to pick his way towards the revelation that the only thing pulling Lily apart is Lily herself.

At last he makes a decision. This is something she will have to forge her own way through. He has mere months until his NEWTs, and he’s behind as it is. He can already picture the looks on his parents’ faces if he comes out with no NEWTs at all—James provided them with almost nothing, and he’s fairly confident that Lily’s going in a similar direction. So he just makes a general sort of tutting noise at the two girls and then twists on his heels and heads off for his lesson.

Lily shouts an insult after him. Albus turns to shoot his middle finger at her then carries on walking. Their laughter follows him all the way down the corridor.

 

 

 

 

 

As the term draws on, dragging the seventh years kicking and screaming towards their NEWTs, Albus feels like things are getting slightly out of control. He goes to the march in London with Rose that’s about stopping Hippogriff racing or something and the pair of them make every tabloid front page for it. The gossips are still latched onto the James and Teddy thing, though Teddy’s fucked off to America until it cools down and James has already got a new girl on the go, and the sight of Albus and Rose arm-in-arm in the middle of the crowd yelling themselves hoarse results in speculation about the precise nature of _their_ relationship. Albus is outraged on Rose’s behalf that all the attention is about that and not about the campaign, but she manages to find it at least fifty percent funny.

“It’s honestly incredible,” she remarks to him one night in the common room, buried in _Razzi_ , Albus’ least favourite of all the tabloid press, “It doesn’t matter how many guys they get pictures of you snogging, they’re always trying to insinuate that you’ve got a thing for girls deep down inside and you’re just, like, crying out for attention or something. But then the minute they catch James with _one_ guy it’s like he’s king of all gay men, never going back.”

Albus doesn’t reply. There doesn’t seem to be much to say; she’s hit the nail on the head. It’s something he’s used to though—the headline that most often accompanied the news about him first coming out a few years ago was whether he was just saying it for attention. A lot of people seem fixated on the idea that the Potters like the attention they are given, would do anything for more of it. He supposes, when you consider the shit James and Lily pull on the regular, attention-seeking is an acceptable potential reason for why they do what they do. Albus understands it better than that though—it’s a morbid desire to shock, in a way. The tabloid press has such a low opinion of his siblings that they are constantly seeking ways to surprise even their sleazy expectations.

The story about Rose and Albus doesn’t gain much traction, since neither of them display even the slightest bit of interest in it, and soon the press are back to the piranha feeding-frenzy around James and Teddy.

Albus is not looking forward to going home for the summer. His parents—forgiving as they try to be—have never seemed entirely sure what to do about James, and this is quite certainly the straw that broke the unicorn’s back. It will be Teddy that is the true disappointment, though. They _expect_ shitty behaviour from James, though they always hope for improvement. But Teddy’s always been so steadfast, so _good_. Even his punk phase didn’t put much of a dent in that.

Then Louis gets suspended for a week in June, right in the middle of the exam period, which throws everybody for a loop. Albus discovers that it’s because he managed to hack into the Muggle espionage unit MI5 and changed all their backgrounds to cupcakes. Most Hogwarts students seem far more impressed than anything else—it’s hard enough getting onto the _internet_ amongst the magic-saturated walls of the school, requires a complicated illegal charm that gets passed around dormmates from time-to-time. So to successfully hack into one of the most secure networks in the UK earns Louis some serious street cred, and when he returns—with more of a swagger than before—chants of “ _Weasley is our king_!” follow him round for a while. His fellow sixth year Ravenclaws even make him a crown. He wears it everywhere for four days before their cousin Roxanne gets fed up and sets fire to it.

Coming out the other side of NEWTs is like being born all over again. The freedom of the future stretches out, boundless and bright. Albus is so relieved he thinks he might die of it. No more long nights in the library with Rose insistently explaining the same fact until it’s just _drilled_ into his skull, no more cramped hands and aching backs hunched over exam papers, no more _schoolwork_. The freedom is so immense that nobody’s really sure what to do with it.

He spends a lot of long, lazy afternoons down by the Black Lake, either alone or with the quiet company of a cousin or two. Lily’s frenetic and he doesn’t have the patience for her now—better that he leaves her with her friends to be tired out before the summer holidays arrive and he’s cooped up in the house with her.

It’s just… gentle. No matter how hot the weather gets (and it keeps warming up, so much that mutters about the worst heatwave in decades start being passed around), the slow lethargic attitude of the Seventh Years persists. They sun themselves in the precious days they have before the term ends and they are thrust mercilessly into the adult world, baking on the cool grass of the school grounds and idly avoiding any mention of the responsibilities soon to be facing them.

There’s a spot Albus particularly likes, around the lake from the castle and hidden from view. The water laps right up to it and it’s not easy to stumble across unless you’re looking for it, which it makes it perfect by his standards. For once, there’s no dramatic new gossip about a member of his family—James’ behaviour is no worse than usual, and Teddy’s still deep in America somewhere keeping his head down. Albus has what’s almost peace.

He’s down there one thick, clouded morning mere days before school gets out. The air’s so heavy everybody knows there’s a thunderstorm pressing in, and Albus is enjoying it immensely. He loves when the sky gets like this, low and threatening and tinged with yellow. He feels like the electricity in the air’s a tangible thing, brushing against his skin like wheat heads in a wild meadow. Most of the school is tucked away inside, leery of getting trapped in the grounds when the rain comes down. The quiet’s so intense you could almost get stuck in it.

He’s sat with his elbows balanced carelessly on his knees, his chin resting on balled-up fists. He’s been uneasy since he got up this morning, and the ominous weather is doing nothing to allay the tension spiking down his spine. It’s the grand looming threat of the adult world that’s laid the foundations for this mood, but it’s not the pillars holding it up.

In all honesty, Albus is more nervous than he’s ever been in his entire life.

The nervousness splits two ways—in one direction he frets over his own disassociation from what he sees going on around him. He feels like everybody is making plans, moving on, picking their direction. Rose is intending to move in with a couple of the Gryffindor girls in London, joining a charity that Albus is sure will have her jetting off to South America or Asia to spread her particular brand of resistance there. Lucy’ll probably be married within the year, so used to playing housewife for her widowed father she’d be lost without the responsibility of it now he’s got a new wife. She could do a lot worse than her Ravenclaw smart-arse, anyway. He looks at her like she turns the tides, which makes him alright in Al’s books. And all the others—they’ll splinter out, setting up homes and lives like his family and friends have done in the years previously.

Albus feels like he’s being trampled underneath it all. His plans aren’t even formless, they’re just plain non-existent. He had a letter from his parents not a week ago, making vague hints that maybe he ought to move in with James, get close to the city to pick up a job somewhere. Albus loves his brother, but he can’t imagine anything worse. He’ll sleep on his couch as often as he can get away with, but something about their relationship means it stays sweetest when they can hold each other at arm’s length, should the need arise. Besides, James is as out of it as Lily at the moment, and Albus is not prepared to shoulder the responsibility of dealing with him like that full time.

And that’s the other split, obviously. The frantic, desperate energy of his siblings. He feels like everything comes back to them no matter how hard he tries to pull himself away. Whatever’s going on with the pair of them is something he’s loathe to dig into, but he feels like he’s going to have to spend the summer trying. He’d hoped James’ _whatever_ with Teddy was just a problem contained to that shitty set of decisions, but he’s come to suspect over recent days that that was just symptomatic of something deeper and more dangerous. He’s not sure he wants to dig into it, but he’s genuinely afraid James is going to shake himself to pieces if somebody doesn’t.

Then there’s Lily, whose atrocious behaviour has only been ramping up since he came across her in the potions corridor back before exams started. He’s fully aware a student with a different last name would have been suspended long ago. She’s scratchy and surly and angry, drinking on the days she doesn’t have the energy to be disruptive and winding teachers and peers up until she’s alienated almost everybody.

Albus heaves an enormous sigh and flops backwards into the grass. It’s a little damp with the water in the air, and he wriggles his shoulders against its glorious coolness in relief. He knows he should go back into the castle and corner Lily to talk through her shit, but he simply doesn’t have the energy. He just wants to be immortalised in this moment, living it over and over until times wraps in on itself. Grass under him and sky pressing above him. Cool and endless.

The summer holidays are a catastrophe waiting to happen, and Albus wants them never to come.

 

 

 

 

He’s right, which satisfies him less than normal. They make it a week before anything blows up. His dad is working a lot—some new magical crime gang terrorising central London—and Albus is secretly enjoying the chance to catch up with his mother. She’s working on an article for The Daily Prophet from home, trailing coffee cups and oversized cardigans around the house, dropping absent-minded kisses on Albus’ head like he’s four years old again when she shuffles through the kitchen for more tea and he’s sat at the table flipping idly through the job sections of the papers.

Albus has been in his too-cool teenage phase for so long he’s genuinely surprised by how much he likes hanging out with his mum. She makes him laugh still, though her tongue’s loosened as her kids have grown, and her jokes are wickeder and darker and make him laugh so hard his stomach hurts. She shows him her article, teases him affectionately for his terrible input, and keeps dragging him out to the big back garden to run Quidditch plays for “research”. Albus has always been an atrocious flyer, and complains the entire time they’re out there, but there’s a secret part of him that enjoys the hours they spend getting sore bums on broomsticks racing around each other. James and Lily have been so loud and so badly behaved for so long he tends to get a little set aside, and it’s a sweetness in itself to get this much undivided attention for so long.

It all goes to hell on a Tuesday. His dad is home for once, tired and greying, jostling with Ginny for space in the study and running and rerunning emergency practices so much Albus is starting to hear them even when he’s well out of earshot.

They’re all in the kitchen when Lily comes home. Albus is leaning against the side, having an idle argument with his parents about the tabloid press. The pair of them are sat at the kitchen table, poking around at Ginny’s article layout together. Harry has a big cut-out wodge of text in one hand, and he’s just lifted it to make an excellent point when the front door smashes open and the sound of high heels ring out against the flagstone hallway. Harry and Ginny exchange a _look_. Albus has to strongly resist the urge to slope out of the room.

“Lily,” Ginny calls, her voice cautiously neutral, “Could you come in here a sec, sweetheart?”

The heels pause. Albus measures the wait in cold dread. He just wants the peace to endure. He doesn’t feel it’s that much to ask, really. Just to have longer than a week of gentle fun at home without one sibling or another shooting it all to shit.

The footsteps gradually resume, drawing closer to the kitchen. At last Lily’s face appears around the door, eyes ringed with smudged, smoky make-up and her hair hanging loose and wild around her face. Albus very much hopes that his parents just assume she’s taken up backcombing rather than guess—accurately—that a stranger’s had his hands in it all night.

“We just wondered where you’ve been, poppet,” Harry begins carefully, putting down his scrap of text, “We expected you home last night, but you didn’t—”

“I stayed at Helena’s,” Lily cuts in, utterly deadpan. Her blankness is superb. Even Albus, with his close understanding of her, marvels at its depth. He can’t get under it at all.

Harry and Ginny exchange another _look_. Albus prepares himself mentally.

“Right,” Ginny says, voice turning warning, “Except, darling, we actually had dinner with Uncle Percy last night, and he said that they had Helena’s sister staying with them because the rest of the family was away on holiday and she hadn’t wanted to go. Lucy had invited her.”

Lily’s expression doesn’t flicker. She eases her weight from one foot to the other and tilts her head just enough to demonstrate her lack of interest.

“Right,” she replies, mimicking her mother, “I said at Helena’s. As in at her _house_. Not with her. Mr Malfoy was there. You know they’re living with him now. They’re on holiday as, like, _blood_ family. With their mum and their dad to prove it’s an amicable split or something.”

Another look passes between their parents, but Albus isn’t sure what the subject of it is now. It could be Lily, but it could also very well be the drama surrounding the Nott and Malfoy families—it’s something the wizarding world is still dancing around, appalled and fascinated by in equal measure.

At last Harry looks back at his daughter and ventures uncertainly, “Alone with Mr Malfoy?” His tone isn’t sure whether to be concerned or cross.

“God, Dad, who do you think I am?” Lily demands, throwing the full force of her teenage exasperation into it, “Scorpius was there. I didn’t want to get the Knight Bus back because it was so late and you get weirdos on there. Scorpius was apparating home so I asked if I could sleep on his couch, and he let me.”

She says this with such firm conviction that even Albus believes her for a second. But then he catches her eye over their parents’ heads and mimics for her to pull her hair over her shoulder and cover the hickey that’s exposed there by the careless drape of her top. She does so with such aimless fluidity Albus is genuinely impressed.

He can tell by his parents’ stiff shoulders that the lie is not sitting well with them.  

“Lily—” Ginny starts, and her tone has turned cold and cross. Lily, true to form, flares up instantly.

“ _God_ , Mum!” she exclaims, white-heat, “I’m out for _one_ night, sue me! You and Dad were breaking into the Ministry fighting _Voldemort_ when you were my age!”

Ginny heaves in a breath to fight back, always provoked so easily to anger by her spiky daughter. Harry cuts across the pair of them, though, laying his hands on the table like he’s creating a physical barrier. His voice is low and soft, expression fraught.

“Can’t you see that that’s why we worry for you?” he asks his daughter, looking curiously vulnerable as he tilts his head towards her. “We’d nearly died fifty times over by the time we were sixteen. We don’t want you to go through that. Not anything close to it. It’s not—it’s not something we’re _proud_ of, Lily. We don’t appreciate having it thrown in our faces.”

His sister goes still all over. Albus feels that urge to creep out surface again. This argument could have been over and done with by dinner time, with luck, but it’s clear that Lily’s having the sort of day where she turns every comment—even the harmless ones—into an insult worthy of a duel, and with her state of mind since the end of the school term Albus is quite sure that nobody is leaving this room unscathed.

“You think _I_ like it?!” she hisses, taking one small step into the room. “You think _I_ like being reminded every five minutes all the amazing things my parents did?”

“Lily—” Albus tries, but she’s too far gone to stop now.

“Because I _hate_ it, Dad, alright?” She paces forward again, looming over her seated father in her tall, tall heels. “Every five _bloody_ minutes I get somebody telling me how _little_ I measure up to you, how _great_ you are and all the incredible things you did! Like it wouldn’t be hard enough to be me without that following me around all the time! It’s no wonder the three of us got so fucked,” she snarls, and her parents physically flinch at the sound of the swearword coming out of her mouth. It’s something they’ve never done, swear in front of their parents. Especially not _at_ them. No matter how much they’ve fought and pissed about and antagonised, that barrier of disrespect has never been crossed.

Albus wants to break in, stop her—do anything. But Lily’s got the bit between her teeth now and she’s sprinting for the home straight.

“Look at James!” she exclaims, slamming both hands down hard on the table top, “He’s killing himself, his head’s so screwed. And you won’t even _see_ it! It’s all just a rebellious phase, or something. You don’t _see_ ,” she growls, her voice near to breaking on that last word, “You won’t even see how bad it’s made him. He’s throwing himself to the wolves and it’s because of the attention he’s always got because of _you_. They couldn’t leave him alone for five minutes to grow up normal because of _you_.”

From his angle Albus can’t see his mother’s face, but he can see the tense line of her shoulders start to tremble just slightly. He can see his dad’s expression, though, and it’s a wretched fractured thing.

“We never meant—” he tries, but there’s nothing to say to Lily that will quell the wildfire in her.

“And Albus!” she cries, like Harry never spoke at all. Al starts from his position, surprised despite everything to be drawn into this. “He’s done the best of the lot of us and even he’s not _close_ to okay. Skulking about in secret with the guys he likes because he doesn’t dare bring any relationships out to be picked apart and dug around in! Always mopping up after me and James so _you_ don’t realise how bad we get. But he can’t tell anybody any of that, obviously,” she spits.

She’s mesmerising. Albus has never seen her this angry—this gloriously, incandescently furious. Their parents haven’t either. That’s why they’re pinned there at the table, unable to find their authority and cool commands to calm down. Usually Lily flares up and explodes in short, tight seconds, and a few incoherent screams of rage later she’s breathless and quiet again. That’s the sort of anger their parents are prepared for. But this—drawn out, dwelled upon, eloquent and spiteful… this they have never faced before.

Lily’s hands curl up into fists against the table. Her voice drops low and venomous, the most Slytherin tone she’s got in her.

“We can’t ever admit to weakness because we’re the children of _Harry Potter_. You saved the _fucking_ world and we can’t even handle the insides of our own heads. How’s that for _pride_ , Dad? Thrown in your face enough yet?”

In the pause that follows this hissed demand, the only sound that fills the big kitchen is Lily’s harsh, erratic breathing. Albus is frozen against the counter, at once fiercely proud of and horrified by his sister for finally bringing their overwrought hearts out for their parents to see with such merciless scorn.

Then Harry drops his head, Ginny makes a sound that’s caught between a sob and a snarl, and Lily picks herself up from the table. It’s remarkable, watching her physically pull herself together. She wipes the wild look off her face like she’s got a cloth for it, straightens her spine and smooths her anger off. Sixteen years old and a master of deceit. Albus wonders if she lets herself feel properly when she’s alone with just a mirror for company.

Nobody says a word. Lily nods once, a small tight movement like she’s pleased with her work here, and then she twists on her left foot and stalks out of the room. They hear her bedroom door crash shut minutes later, and Albus knows they’re all surprised that she’s stayed instead of stormed back out to a friend’s.

 His parents are quiet for long, long moments. They’re staring at each other’s hands, inching closer on the table top. Albus, using all the skill he possesses, slips silently out of the open back door before they can remember that he’s in the room and turn to him to pick apart these revelations. He has never been of a mind to dissect his own emotions, least of all to his parents, and he is not starting now.

 

 

 

His head is whirling so much that he splinches himself a bit when he apparates. It’s something that hasn’t happened to him since he first began learning to apparate, so he’s somewhat taken aback. He pops into existence in an alleyway about ten minutes from his intended destination, bent double over his smarting hand and hissing muffled swearwords from behind clenched teeth.

It turns out to be just a fingernail, but it’s still excruciating as hell. For the briefest moment, though, he’s glad of the pain. It keeps him focused well away from the argument in the kitchen, and will serve to do so until he can reach a better distraction.

He doesn’t bother attempting a healing spell, well aware that his magical ability will probably leave him missing the entire finger instead. So instead he straightens up and shakes out his hand a couple of times, trying to ignore the agony, and marches off.

Thank every heaven, Kieren’s in when he bangs on the door. One of his housemates lets Albus in and points him upstairs. Albus thanks the girl and, ignoring her gasp at his bleeding hand, takes the stairs two at a time.

He arrives a little wildly. Kieren’s on his bed surrounded by Muggle medical textbooks, huge headphones muffling the entire outside world. It would be a studious picture if he wasn’t fast asleep.

Albus leans down and pulls one headphone away from Kieren’s head, then lets it go snapping back. Rowle wakes up with a shout of anger, automatically rolling away from the intrusion and bringing his fists up before he’s clocked that he knows his assailant. Albus watches the whole performance with one eyebrow raised, dripping blood casually onto Kieren’s bedsheet.

“Fucking _Christ,_ Potter,” Kieren heaves out, yanking his headphones off and flinging them at him, “You gave me a heart attack.”

Despite his clear annoyance, he’s already reaching for Albus’ hand. Albus lets him take it without protest. The other boy’s hands are gentle and firm, at odds with his brusque, carefully careless demeanour, pulling Al closer to see the source of the blood.

“I splinched myself,” Albus explains unnecessarily, feeling obligated to clarify the precise reason he’s managed to lose a fingernail, “My house went a bit nuts.”

Kieren keeps hold of Albus’ hand as he leans back to dig down the side of his bed and fish out his wand, and he doesn’t look up as he asks, “Your sister or your brother? Sit down.”

Albus lets himself flop down onto the messy mattress, using his free hand to move a huge textbook from where it’s jabbing into his arse.

“Sister,” he sighs, shutting his eyes as Kieren presses his wand to the spot just below where his fingernail used to be and frowns in concentration.

“This’ll hurt,” Kieren warns, looking once up at Albus with an unexpected level of concern on his face, “Tell me what happened while it grows back.”

He then mutters two short unfamiliar words, and Albus nearly bites his tongue off at the wave of agony that arrows to his brain from his finger.

“Tell me, Potter, come on,” Kieren insists, holding Albus’ hand steady with rock-sure confidence. Albus can feel himself trying to pull away from where Kieren’s wand is pressed against his skin, but he’s not quite brave enough to stop and just endure the pain. Who needs fingernails, anyway? Shit, it hurts.

“Um,” he begins, then swallows hard and tries to concentrate on the problem of Lily. “She, well, _fuck_ , Rowle, this fucking _hurts_. Um, basically she’s been a disaster area since exams. She’s probably failed all her OWLs. But last night she just didn’t come home, didn’t call or anything. My mum and dad tried to have it out with her this morning but she just… like, exploded. It was—it just sort of came out of nowhere. She doesn’t usually get mad like that, you know? Usually she just screams a bit and gets over it. This time was…I don’t know, longer. Harder. She told my parents that the three of us are unfixably fucked up, and that she holds them responsible.”

The pain begins to dull, and when Albus glances at Kieren’s face he finds the other boy watching him very thoughtfully. His pensiveness seems to stem from Albus’ words, though, rather than the medical process happening to his finger.

“What?” Albus asks at last. The pain is finally little more than a dull throb, and Kieren pulls his wand and hand away with a huffed-out breath.

“Look,” he says, sounding like he doesn’t much want to be saying it, “I know you’re not into people giving opinions on your family. I don’t blame you. But…I think somebody needs to do something about your sister. It’s just not _fair_ ,” he exhorts, sounding surprisingly vexed by it, “She keeps fucking you up and fucking your family up and nobody ever _stops_ her. Not you, obviously, you shouldn’t have to. I know you lot are crazy over each other. But, like, _someone_ should. I know your brother fucks up too—hardly surprising considering how much she messes with his head—but at least he contains his shit, you know? Keeps it on _him_. I just feel like your sister projects onto everybody else, and that’s just… not _fair_.”

Albus is stunned into absolute silence. He has no clue what line of defence to leap to first.

“Sorry,” Kieren adds, looking like he means it, “I know you hate judgement and all of that. But I—you fucking matter to me, alright? And I hate knowing she’s screwing things up for you and nobody’s doing anything.”

The very feeble rebuttal that Albus comes up with is, “It’s not her.”

“Bullshit,” Kieren responds, and clenches his fingers over Al’s, “I mean, I know it’s not _completely_ her—things fucked her up, after all. But she makes everything worse. She’s like a—like a catalyst, or whatever. Something that makes everything around it more dangerous and reactionary.”

Albus is weak and angry and tired—so fucking _tired_ —and it is for this reason that he turns traitor and inquires, in a low and shamed voice, “So what would you suggest?”

Kieren relaxes his fingers and sighs, heaving a monumental shrug.

“I don’t know, man. Cut her off. Maybe. Just for a bit. Just so you can see what it’s like without her dead weight dragging you down, you know? And so she can see what she’s got to lose. She thinks she’s got nothing, that’s the problem. But she has. She’s got _you_. She’s got James.”

“She’ll always have James,” Albus says without even thinking, “They’re attached at the soul, those two. James couldn’t cut her off any more than he could cut his own head off.”

Kieren doesn’t say anything to that. They sit there in silence for a long while, blood drying on Albus’ hand and Kieren’s duvet.

“Look,” Albus sighs at last, “This is a bit shit to ask, but I could really do with not thinking about this for a while. Could you kiss me, please?”

Kieren chokes out this funny little half-chuckle.

“Fuck, Potter,” he says, complete with eye roll, “You’re something else.”

But he curls his hands around Albus’ shoulders anyway and rolls down with him, landing in the middle of his mess of books. Albus puts his hand on the corner of one trying to keep his balance and gives out a yelp of pain. Kieren wriggles about beneath him, laughing as he tries to get his back against bed rather than books.

Albus is too keen to get skin on skin to bother with anything more than a cursory repositioning of the obstacles, and the sex does turn out to be very distracting—having to stop every few seconds to shove a new sharp corner aside certainly keeps him preoccupied.

 

 

 

He wakes up to late evening sunshine and a small, silvery stag patronus staring at him from a corner. Anger shoots up inside him like bile, and instead of making a move to cover his nudity he sticks his middle finger up at it.

“Fuck off, Lily,” he whispers, not wanting to wake Kieren sleeping beside him.

“Please, Al,” the stag replies in his sister’s low voice, “Your phone’s off. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean—”

“No,” he interrupts, tone clipped and cross, “I’ve had enough of you. Get your shit together. I’m not doing this anymore.”

The stag draws back, its expression hurt for the briefest moment. Albus can sense his sister wavering through it, teetering on the edge of trying to be conciliatory. But then her nasty side wins out. The patronus hisses out a furious, “ _Fuck_ you,” and vanishes in a quiet puff of silver.

There is a slight movement beside him and Albus turns his head to find Kieren looking at him, eyes bright. The sunlight coming in through the dirty window has turned his skin tawny and soft, his dusty brown hair coppery and slick.

“Well done,” he murmurs, reaching over to press his hand over Albus’ chest, “You did it.”

Albus smiles slightly and covers Kieren’s hand with his own. He feels a little bit good. Horrible, obviously, for deliberately pushing Lily away for the first time maybe ever. But good for having at last done something to try to break the cycle.

“Her patronus is a stag,” Kieren comments, his tone still relaxed and soft.

“Mm,” Al agrees, rolling onto his side, “It’s how I know.”

“Know what?”

He grins, expression unfettered and proud, “That she’s not the kid she wants us to think. She’s so determined for us all to believe she’s hard and cold and resentful about what our dad did in the war. But her patronus—it’s my dad’s. Hers ought to be a wildcat or a panther or something but it’s a stag. She can’t kick her adoration of him. That’s how I know she’ll be okay in the end.”

Kieren makes a thoughtful noise, something low and unformed, and he might be on his way to adding something else when Albus leans in and kisses him. When he draws back, Kieren grins and chases him up, mouths pressed together. It occurs to Albus very suddenly that he really _likes_ this.

He knows it has to stay quiet, and he doesn’t like putting strict labels on things, but for the first time he considers that maybe it wouldn’t be so bad being properly tied to somebody. To actually make it an official thing instead of just sex when either or both of them is bored.

Kieren pushes upwards without warning, twisting nimbly until he is hovering over Albus, expression wicked and full of promise. Without a word he starts kissing down Al’s chest.

 _Yes_ , Albus thinks, kicking the covers off his feet, he wouldn’t mind putting something official on this.

 

 

 

 

By the time he gets home it’s nearly two o’ clock in the morning and the house is dark and quiet. He can hear soft conversation in the sitting room, and slides on silent feet up the hall to avoid it. Getting drawn in by his parents is the last thing he needs. Unfortunately he catches a heavy, tired hand on the bookshelf and rattles the candles on top. Before he can dart upstairs his father’s head pokes out of the sitting room door. He looks _old_ , exhausted and sad and old.

“Al,” he murmurs, “I’m sorry, son. Can we talk to you?”

Albus resists the urge to groan. He just wants to go to bed, to curl up around the memory of Kieren’s mouth and sleep until all his family’s problems have disappeared.

“Alright,” he replies instead of bailing, and with a heavy heart follows his father inside the room. He can tell in an instant that his mother’s been crying. Her eyes are small and red, her cheeks chalk-white under her freckles. He can’t remember the last time he saw her cry.

“Look,” he says right away, determined to do what damage control he can despite his determination not to give Lily any more leeway, “Don’t worry about it. Lily exaggerated, she always does. We’re fine, we’re just—”

“Albus, please,” Ginny interrupts, her voice still thick with tears, “Just tell us the truth.”

His dad sits down on the sofa next to her and they lean into each other, probably without even realising. One of Harry’s hands goes over Ginny’s knee and she wraps her arms around his, intertwining themselves with an envy-inducing intimacy. Probably, Albus muses, he wouldn’t be noticing it had he not that afternoon realised how much he wanted it for himself.

“It’s, uh,” he begins, sinking down into an armchair, “Look, okay, it’s really hard. It is. We can’t—anything we do, people care about it. And usually they don’t have many nice things to say about it. But that’s not your fault. It’s not ours and it’s not yours. It’s a fu—a messed up media system. It’s stupid kids who always knew they could sell stories about us to keep us in check. It’s the magazines for _buying_ the stories. It’s not you.”

“Why didn’t you _tell_ us,” Harry asks, unable to hide his agitation, pushing his glasses back up his nose with a hand that shakes only marginally, “Why didn’t you say anything? We could have—”

“There isn’t anything you can do,” Albus interrupts, firm in this, “We didn’t want to worry you with it, since you couldn’t fix it. It’s _okay_ , honestly. It’s not been any worse than usual lately, that’s not why Lily’s… well, being how she is. It’s something else and she’s just using this to cover it up.”

“What is it, then?” Ginny demands, turned to anger by her helplessness, “What can possibly be driving her to this?”

Albus sits back and thinks hard.

“I honestly—I don’t know. She doesn’t tell me. But at a guess? At a guess I’d say it’s something about James and Teddy. That’s when she flipped. You know—getting in trouble because she found it fun and then getting in trouble because she was furious and didn’t know how to externalise it. It started when that story got out.”

“She must have known before, though,” Harry says, at the same time Ginny bursts out, “But why would _that_ matter?!”

“She did,” Albus replies to his father first, “But I think seeing it everywhere made it real somehow. And Mum—” he begins, then shakes his head and carries on helplessly, “She’s never made it seem like she liked Teddy like that. But maybe she does. She’s good at keeping her cards close to her chest.”

Ginny makes a quiet, exhausted noise that might even be the hint of a laugh.

“She is that,” she agrees. “She really is.”


End file.
